A coworker from the East had never heard about Citizenship grades in elementary schools. (I guess the line ‘You’re a very bad citizen!’ on Star Trek, ‘Miri’, S1E8 would have gone over his head.) I thought I’d look up some information for him and googled: citizenship grade elementary school. The first hit was a school in San Diego, though not the one I went to. The other returns I saw, all seemed to be school-specific. I was hoping there would be a Wikipedia article called Citizenship (academic) or something.
GQ: Is there a page that describes ‘Citizenship’ over the U.S. school system, as opposed to individual pages from individual school websites?
I went to school in the Maryland DC suburbs. We had no such thing in elementary school. We had a “citizenship test” during 10th grade, and the first semester of history class that year was focused on civics in preparation for that test.
This sounds to me like something that would mean something different at every school. It could be an academic subject much like any other that covers things like the structure of government, i.e., what any citizen ought to know. Or it could be a description of the student’s behavior in their other classes.
I certainly did not have any such course. We had civics classes; structure of government, the incredible electoral college, that sort of thing. Oh, and importance of voting.
My elementary school report cards had a whole page for nonacademic behavior on which the teacher could grade us on 17 different criteria, like “Exercises self-control”, “Listens courteously”, “Respects the rights of others”, “Respects private and public property”, “Dresses appropriately”, etc. The word “citizenship” does not appear on the card.
